Tag Archives: management

5 Critical Steps to Better Meetings

July 22, 2019 Admin

By Rich Horwath

Are your meetings creating valuable new insights for the business or are they a series of multitasking-filled monologues? Are they productive conversations about key business issues or a rehashing of the same stuff you’ve been talking about for months? Are your meetings getting better or worse?

Answer these five sample questions from the Strategic Meetings Assessment for the meetings you typically attend:

Relevant information is sent out prior to meetings to avoid one-way presentations during the meetings. Yes__ No __
Meetings start at their scheduled time. Yes__ No __ People are fully attentive and not engaged in multitasking (e.g., checking phones). Yes__ No __
People leave meetings with a clear understanding of who is doing what by when. Yes__ No __
I decline meeting invitations when the purpose and/or agenda have not been communicated. Yes__ No __

In this brief sample, a score of three or more “No’s” indicates an opportunity to dramatically improve the efficacy and productivity of your meetings.

A meeting can be defined as a gathering of two or more people featuring collective interaction and engagement using conversations to make progress toward a purpose. Note the use of the words “interaction” and “conversations” in the definition. If you find yourself in meetings and especially teleconferences on a regular basis where the format is primarily one-way presentation, there’s ample opportunity to improve your situation.

Effective meetings can be energizing forums to help your team set direction, make decisions, and unify efforts. Click To Tweet

Research shows that meetings consume about 40 percent of working time for managers. Key data points from research to consider:

Up to half of the content of meetings is either not relevant to participants or could be delivered outside of a meeting.
20 percent of meeting participants should not be there.
40 percent of the meeting time is spent on information that could be delivered before the meeting.
50 percent of meetings executives attend are rated as “ineffective” or “very ineffective.”

There are five critical steps you can follow to help your organization take a more strategic approach to meetings and teleconferences:

1. Conduct a meetings audit

Before a doctor prescribes a medication, she first diagnoses the patient’s condition. In the same spirit, before you prescribe new meeting guidelines, it’s helpful to first baseline what’s happening today. Look at factors such as the types of meetings you attend, the frequency of meetings, and the length of meetings. Then identify the reasons these meetings exist and if there are any meetings that are not necessary. Once the audit is complete, it provides a bounty of useful information to shape the future state of meetings.

2. Identify current meeting mistakes

Meeting mistakes occur in three phases: pre-meeting, in-meeting, and post-meeting. They can also be categorized as either leader or participant mistakes. For example, a common in-meeting mistake by the leader is failing to rein in off-track conversations. A common in-meeting mistake by participants is multitasking, which conveys a lack of interest in the topic and/or a lack of respect for the person speaking at the time. There are approximately twenty-five mistakes to look for in the three phases to ensure that the group is not sabotaging their own efforts at improvement.

3. Educate managers on what good looks like

Begin this step by collecting the current best practices being used by managers within the organization. Then look externally to see what principles and guidelines are being used by other organizations within and outside your industry as it relates to meetings. Examples of best practice principles include things such as “identify decisions to make in the meeting” and “create a virtual table of participants for teleconferences.” Use these best practices to compile a list of new meeting standards.

4. Utilize meeting tools

One of the keys to leading effective and efficient meetings is aligning the goals of the meeting with the appropriate tools and processes to get there. For instance, if you’re leading a strategy development meeting, there are more than seventy different strategic thinking tools you can choose from to help your team think and plan strategically. The key is to select the handful of tools that make the most sense based on the context of the team, business goals, competitive landscape, etc. Be clear on your meeting goals and then choose the process and tools to get there.

5. Develop meeting checklists

Research in the social sciences on habits shows that in order to effectively change someone’s behavior, it’s helpful to provide physical or environmental triggers. One highly effective trigger is the use of meeting checklists. These physical reminders ensure that teams across the organization are aware of the basic meeting principles, techniques, and tools to optimize their meeting time. However, the checklists are only valuable if they are accompanied by the corresponding discipline to utilize them on a consistent basis.

Effective meetings can be energizing forums to help your team set direction, make decisions, and unify efforts. Ineffective meetings can be anchors that weigh people down with irrelevant information, didactic presentations, and unclear priorities. Which type do you attend today? Do you think it will be different tomorrow?

Rich Horwath is a New York Times bestselling author on strategy, including his most recent book, StrategyMan vs. The Anti-Strategy Squad: Using Strategic Thinking to Defeat Bad Strategy and Save Your Plan. As CEO of the Strategic Thinking Institute, he has helped more than 100,000 managers develop their strategy skills through live workshops and virtual training programs. Rich is a strategy facilitator, keynote speaker, and creator of more than 200 resources on strategic thinking. To sign up for the free monthly newsletter Strategic Thinker, visit www.StrategySkills.com.

Jason Harris

Bolster Your Company’s Culture with 7 Skillsets of No Fail Trust

July 17, 2019 Admin

By Jason O. Harris

Each day you walk into your office, are you giving consideration to what type of culture you are cultivating? Are you and your team of leaders aware that your actions will dictate whether you are cultivating a culture of compliance or culture of connection, commitment, and community?

Daily, you are faced with important decisions, and how you handle those decisions as well as how you interact with your team, will dictate the culture. Your organization’s culture will ultimately determine what kind of experience your customers and clients will have.

If you were to be placed at the helm of a multimillion-dollar Air Force cargo jet or a commercial airliner, under stress and other challenges, there is an absolute necessity for cohesiveness, communication, and commitment in order to be the high-performance team required to operate these jets. You already have a great team, but is your team ready to handle their job along with the stress of combat? This is where it is critical to have the right skill sets that will enable you and your team to Trust the Training, Trust the Process and Trust the People.

In order to cultivate cohesiveness, connection, and commitment in these fast-paced, high-performance teams, there are seven critical skill sets that are always present and encouraged.

If you or your organization are ready to soar to new heights, take a look at the seven skill sets and decide how you can apply personally and within your organization.

1. Professional Knowledge

Professional knowledge is critical and is the foundation to any high-performance individual and team. When your people are equipped with the professional knowledge essential to their jobs, it makes it easier to empower them and trust them to make decisions when things get challenging. Think about a professional pilot and consider how knowledgeable you want them to be. Would you consider your team trained to have that level of knowledge, to execute their job when hundreds of lives are on the line?

2. Situational Awareness

Situational Awareness (or SA) is the ability to understand and comprehend environmental elements, events, and possible scenarios as it applies to time, space, and the collective comprehension of their possible interpretation. There are multiple types of SA to include individual, team, and organizational SA. In order to make the right decisions at the right time, it is critical that SA be present. SA has been cited as being fundamental to successful decision making in aviation, healthcare, emergency response, and many other high-stress environments. The lack of SA, according to scholarly documents, has been a driving factor in accidents attributed to human error. In order to keep your operation performing at its best and being positioned for continued improvement, your people need to have collective SA for any threats that might harm the operations. What kind of training has been put in place that helps to cultivate and reinforce this skill set?

3. Assertiveness

Assertiveness is defined as confident, forceful, self-assured behavior. Further, assertiveness is being self-assured and confident without being aggressive. When it is time to make business decisions and the fate of your organization is on the line, like flying a commercial airliner with hundreds of passengers on board, it is imperative that your people are trained, ready and willing to speak up and assert their voice to avert a disaster. When the success of your organization is on the line, your people need to be empowered to speak up and assert themselves, appropriately, to ensure the operation continues smoothly and, in many cases, in order for the operation to improve. Can your people trust that the leadership team will be ready to listen and acknowledge when they speak up and assert themselves for the greater good of the organization?

Can your people trust that the leadership team will be ready to listen and acknowledge when they speak up? Click To Tweet

4. Decision-Making

Decision-making is the process and action of making choices, especially important choices, by identifying a decision, gathering information, and assessing alternative possibilities. When you look at decision-making and its application to your environment and how it relates to high-performance teams, you need to be ready and able to make important and significant decisions. Sometimes these decisions will have to be made in very short order, without supervision. In order to make these time-sensitive decisions, your people will need to be empowered, knowing that they are prepared and trusted to make decisions that can be very critical to the operation and success of the organization. Consider what you can do to equip, prepare, and empower your people to make the right decision, in a moment’s notice, at the right time.

5. Communication

Communication is defined at the exchange of information or news. When it’s crunch time and critical decisions need to be made, whether in flight at 35,000 feet in the air flying at 600 mph or when a major deal is on the table for your organization, communication is absolutely essential. When it’s time to make decisions, given the time-critical scenario, you want, need and expect your people to communicate. Have your people been empowered and trusted to communicate the critical information at the right time and right place?

6. Leadership

Leadership is defined as the act of leading a group of people or an organization. Every organization, especially high performing organizations, need true and authentic leadership. They need leadership that is effective at all levels of execution. Leadership in your team and organization has to be further defined as the people that influence others to accomplish the team and organizational objectives in a manner that makes the team more cohesive and more committed to each other, the mission at hand, and the organization.

7. Adaptability

Adaptability means being able to adjust to new conditions. When your organization or team is moving at the speed of success, it is imperative that members are adaptable. The organization has to empower its people to be ready and prepared to adapt to many different scenarios. When flying commercial jets across the world, there is likely to be some turbulence and there is likely to be some weather formations along the route. In order to get to the intended destination safely, the crew has to be adaptable to go over, under, and around the turbulence and thunderstorms. Being adaptable can only happen when the people have been empowered.

The next time you walk into your office, you should be clear on the culture you are cultivating! The seven skillsets laid out will support the cultivation of a culture of connection, commitment, and community. When you start to implement these seven skills sets your team will begin to soar to new heights, you and your team will begin to Trust the Training, Trust the Process and Trust the People!

Jason O. Harris is a leadership and trust speaker, consultant, and certified character coach. As a decorated combat veteran, Jason brings unique perspectives gained from his battlefield experience to your organization. Jason’s No Fail Trust™ methodology was crafted from his own harrowing, life-altering experiences, and conveys the importance of cross-generational communication and mutual trust. Jason enjoys working with organizations and leaders that are no longer willing to settle for cultures of compliance and are ready to build and cultivate cultures of commitment. For more information on Jason O. Harris, please visit www.JasonOHarris.com.

Magi Graziano

8 Steps to Transform your Corporate Culture

July 2, 2019 Admin

By Magi Graziano

The engagement level of your workforce expands beyond the limits of offering tangibles such as a great benefits package, competitive market rates, flexible work schedules and challenging projects. Your company culture is truly your competitive advantage.

Most leaders are intent on shaping a constructive, collaborative and innovative workplace; however, accomplishing this eludes most. The following 8 steps are tried-and-true advances to creating a great place to work.

1. Understanding That the Organization is a ‘Human’ System

The human system is made of people and poses a higher degree of competency from all those who operate inside it. A human system requires much more cultivating as a living and breathing system is made up of many different people with thousands of perspectives, thoughts, beliefs, points of view, preferences, etc.

Each person involved and engaged in shaping a constructive corporate culture needs to understand their specific role. Click To Tweet

In a highly functional human system, such as a constructive corporate culture, the functionality of the system as a whole empowers individuals to fully participate with one another outside the limits of personal agendas and ego and inspires people to collectively collaborate and contribute to the group cause.

Understanding the realities of the human system allows you to become responsible for intervening in the ‘drift’ and consciously shaping a culture that operates outside the automatic, normal human conditioned patterns. When leaders of organizations understand the fundamental human operating mechanism and how thoughts work, they can proactively intervene and intentionally create an experience for people operating in the human system to thrive. This intentional experience is a constructive corporate culture.

2. Getting Curious About What Is So

When you take the time to peel back the onion and analyze the current condition of the human system in your organization at a macro level, it gives you insights into the root causes of labor disputes, stifled workforce productivity, unwanted employee turnover, and lack of employee engagement.

It is imperative that you inform your people what you are up to and why. When you do reach out and let them know that you want to have a conversation or send a survey about culture, share the purpose behind your curiosity. If you are unclear about your reason and purpose for learning more, wait until you are filled with purpose or compelled by a real business need to move forward.

Before you begin your inquiry process, ask yourself what you really want to learn and what will you do with the information once you learn it. As you are speaking to people and reviewing the results of the survey, embrace your most curious, non-judgmental, non-reactionary, authentic self. Staying in the neutral zone during your conversations allows you to sense patterns and discern systemic organizational themes.

3. Acknowledging the Unworkability

Every executive has an image of how the ideal organization operates. The first step in any positive organizational change effort is getting real—the acceptance of what needs to change and what needs to happen to have the change last.

Make a list of the areas uncovered in the data collection process (interviews, focus groups, surveys) and prioritize the highest impact areas. The highest impact areas are highest because if improved, they would glean the highest return on time, money and effort invested. Next connect the underlying behaviors, operating values and organizational processes or mindsets that intentionally or unintentionally constrain the overall engagement, performance, collaboration, and innovation among your workforce. Once you believe you have a handle on what is not working, it is important to allow the impact of this unworkability to move you into action.

4. Owning the Impact

Like it or not, the most senior executive is the ultimate guru with regards to how the organization operates. They decide what behavior is tolerated and how people treat each other. Introspection and self-awareness allows you to get real with yourself about what is really going on in the organization. If you are able to let go of self-judgment and defensiveness, you are much more able to see yourself as at the source of the unworkability. It is not about accepting blame or feeling guilty and taking responsibility for the problem; rather it is about seeing how you as the leader set the tone and create the space for constructive or destructive behavior to exist in the workplace.

5. Creating an Inspiring Vision

A mission statement is meant to guide the way for people to know and understand how to behave, act, react and work in sync with one other to accomplish the collective goal. In the absence of a grounded, motivating mission, human beings naturally focus on their individual experience and personal goals. The power and detriment of personal thinking in a human system is that it produces silo mentality, unnecessary competition and friction throughout the organization.

6. Enrolling Others

Enrollment creates the possibility for others to feel connected and inspired in the workplace. Once you gain clarity of your mission and vision, communicating the message to the workforce is essential. Communication is often where messages break down. Realize that every person in your workforce has a unique perspective and way of listening, and target your message to the greater population and the varying degrees of listening. When crafting the message discern the impact it will have on the people hearing or seeing it.

7. Designing and Following a Road Map

Once you have inspired the troops and promised a bright future for all who lead and follow in the organization it is time to formulate a specific action plan. A cultural alignment road map includes desired outcomes, initiatives, programs, training, projects, people, and timelines.

Each person involved and engaged in shaping a constructive corporate culture needs to understand their specific role, the amount of effort required outside of normal responsibilities, goals, and the desired organizational outcomes. Laying out a plan for what comes first, second and third as well as who is ultimately responsible for keeping the overall action items and constructive culture initiatives on track is necessary to move forward. As with any major organizational improvement, meeting regularly, tracking progress and publishing results is what empowers forward movement.

8. Measuring What Matters

Now that all the groundwork has been established, you know the why, what, how, and who, it is critical for success that you measure the benefits of the systemic changes you are making. Many organizations utilize the balanced scorecard approach as a framework for setting the right metrics. Additionally articulating and tracking the key result areas impacted by shaping a constructive culture gives insight and information that tells people in the organization what is working and what is not, what needs to pivot or realign, and what needs to stop. Without system-wide accountability from the top to the bottom and everyone in between, the organization won’t flourish. A core component of a constructive culture is an achievement. When you measure what matters, people pay attention. Through accountability and transparency, people get to see their impact, how the team is doing and how the culture improving is elevating the organizations’ operating effectiveness.

In Conclusion

The eight steps to transforming your corporate culture from the inside-out are not difficult to walk through. They are not revolutionary. These steps are simply a common sense approach to bringing out the best in people in the places they work.

Magi Graziano is a speaker, author, and Chief Evangelist for KeenAlignment, a global people optimization consultancy firm and Inc., 5000 award recipient. Her book, The Wealth of Talent, was written from over twenty years of real-world, hands-on experience. Those who experience Magi’s programs, on average, reduced operating expense 8 percent, improve net profit 5.6 percent and increase revenues by as much as 200 percent. For more information, please visit www.KeenAlignment.com.

Anne Connor

Finding and Leveraging External Communications Professionals

June 15, 2019 Admin

By Anne Connor

Cassandra works at a firm spearheading a park renovation project and was tasked with producing a community outreach survey in a nearby city. After hiring a copywriter who specializes in public relations to draft the text, the city indicated that the questionnaire would also need to be distributed in Spanish and Vietnamese in order to maximize participation among the neighborhood’s residents who were not proficient in English. Cassandra thought she had found the solution because she had two bilingual coworkers who could render the English text into those languages. Everything was going according to plan until the engineer manning the hotline given in the survey started receiving calls from residents she could not understand. To make matters worse, many of these same residents attended the project’s informational open house, only to find that there were no interpreters available to assist them. They not only expected to be able to communicate in the language they felt the most comfortable with, but it turns out they also had questions about the ambiguous language in the translations. The situation caused major confusion, requiring Cassandra and her colleagues to work overtime to clear things up.

Communications is a tricky business, especially when you’re dealing with foreign languages. That’s why many companies—both large and small—turn to outside experts to support their communications and language needs. Whether you’re looking to hire a freelance translator or a full-service communications firm, here are five tips for selecting the right service provider:

1.Define your needs

This first step actually starts by defining the needs of your target audience. Who are they and how do they communicate or consume content? Think about how you will communicate with them from beginning to end. For example, if your website is going to be translated into Spanish, then customers will expect a Spanish-speaking contact person to answer their questions either orally or in written form. Outline your requirements. Do you need help with advertising, content development, digital or social media, marketing, public relations, strategic communications, or all of the above? Perhaps a freelance marketing copywriter or copy editor is all you need to take your website copy up a notch. More comprehensive communications campaigns will likely require the services of a communications firm or consultant with expertise in multiple media channels. Some consultants even offer media training services for your staff to help them look and sound professional in TV commercials and radio spots.

2. Begin your search

Communications is an artform—one that can vary from industry to industry. Look for professionals with proven experience in your company’s field or with your project’s requirements. In today’s connected world, you don’t always have to hire someone local. However, before looking too far away, consider how doing so might affect your bottom line. Start with your local Chamber of Commerce for audiovisual media production companies or check out The Society for Editing (ACES) to find local copywriters and/or copyeditors. The Public Relations Society of America is a useful resource for finding a nearby PR company.

Briefing your service providers properly can often make or break your project’s success Click To Tweet

3. Be prepared

Briefing your service providers properly can often make or break your project’s success. While preparing to interview specialists or full-service consultants, gather five pieces of information needed to adequately assess, quote and execute your job. Obviously, you should expect communications professionals to do their homework, but even the most specialized firms will need your help to get to know your company, your needs, and your objectives. Make sure they understand your industry jargon—the language your target audience speaks. Take a “more-is-more” approach and in the long run you’ll save time, money, and embarrassment.

4. Ask questions

If you’ve picked out proven experts, then you’re already on the right track, but don’t make assumptions. Question the offers you have received and ask the service providers to walk you through their processes. If your project involves multiple languages, ask how the providers intend to deliver. Do they partner with professional language service providers adept at managing multilingual translation (written communications) and interpreting (oral communications)? By asking all the right questions, you’re more likely to avoid unpleasant surprises and steer clear of awkward situations—especially those that could damage your reputation.

5. Stay Engaged

Your job doesn’t stop once you’ve hired a communication professional or firm. Though it is important to let the experts get to work, make sure you follow their progress and are highly responsive to their questions every step of the way. View your relationship as a collaboration and make them feel part of your team. And once the project is over, ask for feedback and ideas. What other opportunities do they see to further your business goals? The answers just might surprise you!

Had Cassandra followed these steps and consulted with professionals throughout the process, she would have likely leveraged their expertise and avoided an embarrassing and costly situation.

Anne Connor is a Spanish- and Italian-to-English translator and language-services professional with over twenty years in the business. She holds a BBA in Business Law from Temple University in Philadelphia and is an active member of the American Translators Association. The American Translators Association represents over 10,000 translators and interpreters across 103 countries. For more information on ATA and to hire a translation or interpreting professional, please visit www.atanet.org.

Patrick Ungashick

Business Valuations: Three Situations When You Might Not Need One

May 28, 2019 Admin

By Patrick Ungashick

Business valuations are an important tool for owners and leaders of privately-held companies. For example, if you are doing sophisticated tax planning, buying-out a business partner, or if an owner is going through a marital divorce, then a valuation may be highly prudent—if not legally required. However, business owners and leaders should avoid rushing to get a valuation in circumstances where the need is not clear. Listed below are three common situations where getting a valuation may seem to make sense, but actually might be unnecessary or counterproductive.

Situation One: You are Getting Ready to Sell the Company

A commonly held view among business owners is to get a formal valuation prior to selling the company. Some valuation firms, investment bankers, and business brokers promote business valuations as a first step in preparing to sell. Presumably, this identifies the potential sale price and helps the selling owner set realistic expectations. A closer examination suggests a valuation in this situation is often unnecessary or even misleading.

Investment bankers or business brokers familiar with your company’s industry should be able to provide an estimated range they expect the company could sell for, without a formal valuation. Also, a formal appraisal before selling the company can be misleading. To explain why, imagine you intend to sell your home, and to determine your listing price you have the home appraised. The appraisal comes in at 1 million dollars, and so you list the home for sale at that price. After many months, you receive multiple offers but only for around 800,000 dollars. In that example, the home’s value is clearly closer to 800,000 dollars rather than 1 million dollars, regardless of what the appraisal said.

The same thing can happen in reverse. If you list your home for 1 million dollars but immediately you receive multiple offers for a much greater amount, then the appraisal was misleading—it was too low. Just like with a home, what your company is worth at sale is what a buyer will pay for it. Period. The existence of a third-party valuation claiming that your company is worth X dollars amount will not cause a potential buyer to increase its offer price by 1 dollars more than it is otherwise willing to pay.

If you are preparing to sell your company, rather than getting a valuation, ask several investment bankers or business brokers to estimate a likely sale price, and explain their reasoning. You still may end up selling your company for a higher or lower price, but you will not have wasted time and money on a valuation that potential buyers will typically ignore.

Situation Two: You’re Curious

Knowing what a privately-held company is worth is difficult or impossible most of the time. This can be frustrating, particularly when the company is the usually the owner’s most valuable (and cherished) asset. Imagine putting most of your money into an investment portfolio where you will rarely know what your investments are worth. Few people would be able to sleep at night in that situation.

Therefore, business owners can be tempted to get a formal valuation simply to know what their company is worth at that point in time. It can be helpful to periodically establish a realistic understanding of the company’s value, not mention help get a good night’s sleep. However, paying thousands of dollars to get somebody’s opinion about what the company is worth (even an expert opinion) is often not necessary, because alternative methods may be available for little to no effort or cost.

One alternative method to gauge your company’s value is to research what companies in your industry and of similar size are currently selling for, based on a multiple of earnings (usually calculated as Earnings Before Interest and Taxes, plus Depreciation and Amortization—EBITDA) or in some cases a multiple of revenue.

For example, if companies in your industry and similar size are currently selling for six to eight times EBITDA, and your company’s EBITDA is 2 million dollars, then your company value could fall between 12 million dollars and 16 million dollars. Clearly, this approach does not provide the depth of analysis nor precision that is provided by a formal valuation. But a market-based estimate will give you a general understanding of company value on a periodic basis—without the time and expense of a formal appraisal.

To learn the applicable multiples, ask an investment banker or business broker knowledgeable in your industry. That person may know the current market multiples off the top of their head, or likely can get the answer for little effort. Alternatively, research the subject online. You may find a recent article or report prepared by a trade organization, consulting firm, or business advisor that summarizes market-multiples in your space.

Any formal valuation must consider external forces such as industry trends, economic conditions, and capital markets. Click To Tweet

Situation Three: You Want to Track Company Performance

The third situation that seems to require a valuation is to track changes in your company’s performance and growth over time. Again, the value of a privately-held company can be a great unknown. Many business owners and leaders see benefit to engaging a valuation expert, and use the appraisal to monitor the company’s performance. However, getting a formal valuation in this situation may be unnecessary and counterproductive.

The valuation may be unnecessary simply because other metrics are usually readily available. Your company’s leadership team should be able to identify the five to ten most relevant operational, sales, and financial metrics that drive company results. Create a dashboard that frequently (not less than monthly and preferably weekly) displays these key metrics. This approach creates more timely and actionable feedback for the company leadership than a formal valuation.

Tracking company performance using a formal valuation may also be counterproductive, because a valuation is only partially based on the company’s internal results. Any formal valuation must consider external forces such as industry trends, economic conditions, and capital markets. These external forces can mask how the company is empirically performing. To illustrate the point, using a valuation to track company performance is like a pilot estimating his or her plane’s arrival time but overlooking the effects of wind. If the pilot needs the plane to fly 500 mph to arrive on time, and the current airspeed gauge shows 500 mph, then it might seem to the pilot that the plane will arrive on-time. However, if the plane is only flying 450 mph but is currently boosted by a 50-mph tailwind, only when the tailwind dies down will the plane’s underperformance become apparent.

A dashboard that displays key operational, sales, and financial metrics will provide the company’s leadership with more relevant and visible performance feedback, without being diluted by the external data that is important in a formal valuation but counterproductive in this specific situation.

Conclusion

Business valuations play a crucial role in many situations and offer owners and leaders an important tool to build successful companies, and one day achieve successful exits from those companies. Yet like any tool, valuations need to be used in the proper manner, and at the proper times. Owners and leaders should apply care to determine if a valuation is truly needed, or if alternative solutions exist.

Patrick Ungashick is the CEO of NAVIX Consultants, a celebrated speaker on executive and business owner exit planning, and the author of A Tale of Two Owners: Achieving Exit Success Between Business Co-Owners. With his wealth of knowledge on exit planning, Patrick has provided exit advice and solutions to business owners and leaders for nearly thirty years. For more information on Patrick Ungashick please visit: www.NAVIXConsultants.com.